


She Cries

by pleaseenteryourusernamehere



Category: Ocean's (Movies), Ocean's 8
Genre: Daddy Issues, F/F, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-26
Updated: 2018-06-26
Packaged: 2019-05-29 00:35:44
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,266
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15061193
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pleaseenteryourusernamehere/pseuds/pleaseenteryourusernamehere
Summary: Lou learns there's more to the Oceans than just a family full of con artists. Back-in-the day fic.





	She Cries

Debbie Ocean was not a violent person. Lou had figured that out within the first year of knowing her. She didn’t yell out of anger; she tensely destroyed your argument with a sharp tongue. She didn’t break things when she was upset; she planned a heist. She didn’t attack people; she’d rather ruin them with nothing more than her own wit. She never used weapons in her cons; she didn’t want to run the risk of actually, physically hurting someone along the way.

In fact, in their near decade of friendship, Lou had only seen her become violent once-and hadn't even _seen_ her become violent, just saw the mess she had left. After a particularly poorly thought out con, the infamous Frank Ocean had taken the time to speak to his daughter about it. Lou didn’t know much about their relationship, except for the fact that it was strained and hardly civil, but she couldn’t imagine having a con man as a father-what kind of bond may be able to form between the two. Not that she was any expert on paternal figures; her lost birth certificate didn’t even have a name listed for the father. In any case, she had come home the day that Frank had visited, only to find the apartment an absolute wreck and Debbie nursing bruised and bloody knuckles. She never mentioned what it was that her father had said that unnerved her enough to punch a hole through the wall. With the knowledge that Debbie didn’t even kill spiders, the thought of her even becoming angry enough to break the fucking _wall_ made her understand more than anything how touchy of a subject Frank was.

So today, when Rusty had managed to track Lou down with the heady warning that Frank Ocean had died the night before, she wasn’t sure what she was walking in to as she opened their apartment door. For a moment, she thought Debbie wasn’t there because there was no mess, but as she continued to walk throughout the apartment she found Debbie sitting on the couch drinking vodka out of a crystal glass. On the coffee table, there was an array of drinks; rum, gin, vodka, bourbon, tequila, the whole lot, all patiently waiting to be used.

“Deb?” She asks, cautiously stepping forward to approach her. She looks composed; white shirt impeccably bright, hair straightened perfectly, jeans clinging to her legs like they were made for her. She isn’t even close to how Lou expected her to be.

“I’m not going to explode.” Her voice is hoarse, as if she’d just been screaming, and her eyes are distraught, but her flawless makeup proved that she hasn’t cried yet.

“I didn’t think you would,” Lou says in what she hopes is a soothing voice as she sits down at the opposite side of the couch. She isn’t sure what the proper etiquette towards handling someone who had just received news that their estranged father had died in his jail cell was, so she patiently waits as Debbie drinks her glass in small sips.

“I told myself I’d never cry for that son of a bitch.” Debbie says, voice tight with emotion and eyes trained on the wall when the glass is finally empty and put on the coffee table with a loud  _clink_.

“Then don't."

Debbie stands-surprisingly steady considering she’s undoubtedly consumed an ungodly amount of alcohol-and Lou eyes her warily.

“I know-I won’t I-I just-I keep thinking…” she runs a hand through her hair as her voice continues to raise in pitch and volume, “I’m thinking too much, goddammit! _He_ taught me that-never stop thinking-always have to use your mind-fuck him, fuck,” her hand swipes along the coffee table in a rage, sending bottles of alcohol flying and crashing to the floor, “him!” Lou freezes on the couch as she takes in Debbie’s uncharacteristic actions. “Why the fuck do I care if he died alone in his cell? Why do I care that he’s dead? Why do I-he never cared!” She’s screaming now, voice loud, strong, and so unbelievably angry. “He never gave a fuck about me except to-to-to teach and manipulate and use and to-I would’ve given anything to get away from him my entire life, but now he’s dead and I still _can’t_ fucking get away!” The lamp is launched at the wall, breaking into a million blue ceramic pieces as Debbie continues to pace like a caged animal around the living room, finally stopping in front of the mirror.

She takes a deep breath and Lou can see her livid face glaring at her own reflection in the mirror as she continues in a low, shaky voice, “I have his eyes...Danny and I-we both have his eyes.” She says it like it's a confession, like she deserved to be burned for having anything in common with her father.

Slowly, she turns to Lou, who takes that as a good sign and rises off the couch to approach her.

“Deb-” Without a warning, Debbie spins back around, shattering the mirror with her fist before ripping the frame off the wall and sending it flying across the apartment, where it breaks the dry wall and falls to the floor in two splintered pieces. She stands there, looking between the broken mirror and Lou for a minute, eyes desperately trying to convey a thousand messages Lou couldn't understand because there was so much she didn't know.

“Debra, come here,” she says authoritatively after a minute, not taking a second to consider the fact that Debbie may hit her next as her knuckles drip blood on the floor. Although Debbie doesn’t move to meet her, as Lou examines her bleeding hand, leads her to the kitchen, and rinses the blood off with soap and water, she doesn’t protest. In fact, she doesn’t even make eye contact or say a word as her knuckles are cleaned and covered in liquid bandage, gauze, and medical tape in the minutes that follow. The two stand in the kitchen, Lou standing tall as if she's standing for the both of them as Debbie's shoulders are drooped in a rare moment of weakness.

“I’m sorry,” Debbie finally says quietly, still refusing to meet Lou’s eyes. “For the mirror...and the lamp and the alcohol.”

“I don’t give a shit about those,” Lou says, dipping her head just slightly so  she can make eye contact. Debbie's eyes are gleaming with unshed tears and red with unrestrained anger and hurt, but she looks away before Lou can even blink.

“I think I got blood on-"

"Listen to me, if you don’t want to talk to me about it, at least visit Danny.” Lou cuts her off, not giving a damn about blood on her precious hardwood floors, but desperately wanting to know what had caused her composed partner to completely unravel. At the same time, however, she’s capable of understanding that there were some sides to Debbie she’d never get to know and she'd just have to swallow that feeling down if Debbie did't want to tell her. She wasn't an idiot either; she could make assumptions that would be close to accurate if Debbie shut her out.

“I already talked to Danny. He...he’s just as fucked up as I am right now.” Her voice is hollow and her pained eyes take in Lou for a minute while the gears in her brain are practically whizzing in the tense silence. She gives Lou a nod, as if she’s been having a conversation with herself and continues, “My-he was...awful. He wanted Danny and I to be beyond perfection and stopped at nothing to try and make us that way. Excellence wasn’t an option-you were an Ocean, you had a legacy to live up to, to build upon, to preserve. Everything was a series of games and tricks and tests on us, since we could talk. You did what he wanted or,” a shaky breath and slow blink, “you paid.”

She runs her pointer finger from her uninjured hand along the scar next to her eye, meeting Lou’s eyes with a guarded expression. “I said this was from a pool deck when I was little? I lied. I fucked up and he let me know it. I was eight.”

Lou breathes out a “Debbie” as a thousand things click in her mind. She and Danny had unbelievably high pain tolerances, were uncannily protective of one another and those they were close to, never visited Frank while he was in jail, and never spoke in depth about their family or addressed the scandalous rumors about their mother’s absence from their childhood. Debbie was not violent, and the more Lou thought about it, neither was Danny. They'd experienced enough pain in their childhoods to never physically hurt someone in their adulthoods.

“It’s okay to cry, it doesn’t have to be for him,” Lou says, circling her arms around her partner’s lithe frame. She can feel how hard Debbie is fighting the tears; with her deep breaths and tense muscles, she’s practically shaking. “Shhh, Deb, it’s okay, there’s no one here but me and you.”

Those wind up being the words that break her; a dam is unleashed and no matter how hard she tries, she cannot _stop_ crying.

She cries for the five year old girl whose hands were slapped until they were blue when she couldn’t pick pocket perfectly. She cries for the eight year old girl who didn’t check the batteries in the walkie talkies before an operation and wound up hospitalized the next day. She cries for the ten year old girl who didn’t know what happened to her mother and never would know because Frank Ocean could make _anything_ disappear. She cries for the fourteen year old girl who weighed less than ninety pounds so she could fit through small spaces on heists for her father. She cries for the seventeen year old girl whose acceptance letter to Stanford was ripped to shreds right before her because “Oceans don’t go to college.”

She cries for all the moments in between, long forgotten amongst worse memories, when she hadn’t allowed herself to cry. She cries for her mother, who is most likely dead, buried in remote woods or in concrete or somewhere equally as impersonal. She cries for Danny, who she knows is scared shitless in his marriage since he lived in constant fear that he’d wake up one morning to find Tess gone because he was too much like his father. She cries because never in her entire life, save for her brother, has she had someone who cared as deeply about her as Lou did.

Lou, who’s soothingly running her long fingers through Debbie’s dark hair, murmuring words of comfort to her like she’s a child who thought there were monsters under her bed. Lou, who when Debbie finally pulls away from her neck after more than thirty minutes of crying, gives her a tentative smile as she wipes away the smeared makeup off of Debbie's cheeks. She didn't care that the shirt she was wearing was ruined; mascara and eyeshadow had given the blue button up a dark, wet, black patch. She didn't care that Debbie was a red, puffy eyed  _mess_ when she gingerly held her jaw, gently pressing her lips against Debbie's.

They had kissed before-probably hundreds of times-but never had one that was as sweet as this one.

Their lips ghost over one another's, tongues lightly exploring, and hands roaming in a nearly innocent fashion, as if they’re just touching for comfort, not  pleasure. It is slow, warm, and familiar, like a kiss first thing in the morning when your mind is too fuzzy from sleep to process anything but the feeling of it all. Even as Lou's mouth travels further down Debbie's jaw, down to her neck and collar bone, the kisses remained featherlight and unhurried, patiently placed as if everything was preplanned and thought out. Lou's tongue knew where to go to have Debbie gasp and clutch at her, but she takes her time using it so she could comfort her in the way that she knows best. Her lips eventually travel up to Debbie's open mouth and this kiss is firmer, lips moving against each other's faster, tongues clashing with more force, and breath catching in both of their throats. When they do pull away, it's simultaneously and Debbie has a shy grin adorning her swollen lips. Lou runs her thumb along them slowly, admiring for a moment how unbelievably soft they were before returning Debbie's smile.

"I'm sorry," Lou offers, voice hardly more than a whisper, but Debbie shakes her head as if to say  _It's not your fault_ and Lou nods, not saying anything more.

Lou doesn't say anything two days later when she and Debbie are dressed in black and on their way to Franklin James Ocean's funeral. She doesn't say anything as Danny nearly sweeps Debbie off her feet with a crushing hug in the cemetery. She doesn't say anything about Danny's haggard appearance or Tess's soft, loving eyes as she looks between her husband and his sister. She doesn't say anything as Debbie grips her hand like it's her only lifeline throughout the service. She doesn't say anything as Debbie hastily wipes away tears when they're back in the safety of their apartment.

She instead wraps her arms around Debbie once again, letting the Ocean to rest her head in the nape of her neck as she does something her late father would've never allowed; she cries.


End file.
